Why Mozilla launching an operating system is important.

So Mozilla, of Mozilla Firefox web browser fame, announced last month that it was going to join the messy fight Apple and Google have been battling, and launch an operating system of its own.
It seems a bold move, especially from a company that only places 3rd in the competition for most used web browser, but it's being backed by some big names.

Firefox plan to launch in 'emerging markets' first (i.e. Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Spain among others) with a UK launch date set in 2014. However their encouraging developers to get stuck in now.

So why should we care?

Well for starters Mozilla is a not-for-profit company, as there slogan wryly points out 'doing good is part of our code' (code - get it - they program code! Hilarious), and they're pitching Firefox OS as some sort of vigilante OS - a free-love, open development friend-to-all OS. This is not the iDictatorship of Apple, chuck out the Android rule book, because the Firefox OS won't rely on the phones programming - it's all done using the web and coding like HTML5, meaning it's a lot easier to write and distribute apps without having to tick Apple or Google's boxes.

It means apps will control everything on the phone - right down to the camera and the noises it bleeps. The bods at Firefox, fed up of having to navigate their work through the various channels run by Apple, Google, Microsoft etc have instead turned around and said, actually we can do it better, and the developers can do it in a language they already know - the web.

Gary Kovacks, the Firefox Chief Executive stated "our goal is to level the playing field and usher in an explosion of content and services that will meet the diverse needs of the next two billion people online."

Is Firefox the Guy Fawkes of tech? Has it come to blow up the powers that be? Some have argued Firefox will remain the underfox as the big players continue to war against each other, but others are touting the potential of the OS to lower the price of smartphones and make technology more accessible.